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All posts for the month August, 2007

Senator Craig of Idaho is getting no sympathy, nor does he deserve any.

Usually when someone gets caught with their pants down, it should be forgiven and forgotten. Whether straight, gay, or bi, we all have a sex drive and sometimes make mistakes.

Senator Craig, however, has a record of promoting hateful and discriminatory laws against homosexuality. It is bad enough to persecute those who are different, but especially unforgivable to condemn behavior that one is secretly doing oneself.

When someone claims innocence, we should give him the benefit of the doubt. But, although Craig denies being gay, he has said nothing about being bisexual, and so far he has not offered a credible alternative explanation for his ‘signals’ to the man in the next stall.

As a heterosexual man, I do not understand prejudice against gays. There is no logical reason to resent them, deprive them of equal rights, nor to feel angry or violent toward them. Perhaps those who have homosexual desires that they do not want to admit, sometimes even to themselves, may try to overcompensate, developing an obsessive fear and hatred toward those who share the desires that they themselves resent having. Such people need psychological help, and, in a more accepting society it would be much easier to treat problems like that. Personal problems, however, are never an excuse to persecute others. Senator Craig needs to be removed from his position so that he can do no further harm to equal rights in America.

For the most part, we, the people, agree that we should be able to share information and entertainment freely among ourselves.

They, the greedy corporations, and those they have brainwashed to be like them, are opposed to that natural human freedom. Though they are a numerical minority, they have the money to buy the lawyers and the politicians to make the rules. Those of us who reject their rules are given the label ‘pirates’

Rickard Falkvinge of Sweden has taken that label and formed the Pirate Party, which has become one of the top 10 out of 40 political parties in Sweden. Though it deals with only one issue, it is important to people everywhere; the movement is destined to spread throughout the world.

To many people in other nations, restrictive copyright and patent laws are yet another facet of US economic imperialism. To the American people, such laws go against the grain of freedom.

The concept of sharing between friends, neighbors, and even strangers is auniversal virtue. We lend books to friends. Libraries are organizedbook-sharing. For years we’ve made tapes of our favorite music for oneanother. Before writing was invented, we memorized stories, poems, andsongs to share them with others.

Sharing information and media is not much different than sharing tools orhelping one another build houses or barns. It is all part of humancooperation, one of the finest traits of our species.

So if big business wants to call normal freedom-lovingpeople pirates, let them. But it seems to me that those who think theycan own and control ideas, information, and entertainment, and demandtribute every time sharing occurs– those are more like extortionistsand highway robbers.

The naval response.It seems that a site called The Power Hour actually wrote the Navy about their swastika-shaped building, and received an answer which is linked to above. An oversight? Interesting choice of words.

It is hardly reassuring that a branch of the US military is so unconcerned about presenting to the world a symbol of extreme totalitarianism and intolerance, nor that those in charge, if they are to be believed, were so careless and stupid as to not notice the design until after it was built.